CORPSAFRICA

CorpsAfrica gives bright, ambitious African men and women the opportunity to serve in their own countries or other African countries to facilitate small-scale, high-impact projects that are identified by local people, along the lines of the Peace Corps model.

We established the first CorpsAfrica office in Morocco in 2013, and expanded to Senegal and Malawi in 2015 through a grant by OCP Foundation made through the Clinton Global Initiative. Initially, we are focusing on gaining traction, testing innovative ideas, demonstrating success (including learning from mistakes), and building momentum. We currently have 17 Volunteers serving in Morocco, eleven in Senegal (including nine Senegalese and two Moroccans), and twelve in Malawi (including ten Malawians and two Moroccans). We are working to demonstrate our impact and build a reputation for excellence in terms of results for communities and a transformative experience for individual Volunteers. We want to perfect the model in Morocco, Senegal and Malawi in order to scale up to other countries. It is critical that we shore up the headquarters infrastructure in Washington, DC to ensure an international directorate that will provide vision, support, cohesion and direction as we expand across Africa.

Many factors have contributed to CorpsAfrica's success.
- First and foremost – the Volunteers are truly spectacular young people, eager to be a part of the solution for their country and show the world what they can do.
- Morocco was a terrific country from which to start CorpsAfrica. It's politically stable with a long history of the Peace Corps, and the people are warm and welcoming. The communities treated our Volunteers as if they were their own – and they worked together to identify and implement projects that address their top-priority needs.
- With Group 2, we tested utilization of the Design Thinking, which is a problem-solving technique that brings a structure to the facilitation process. The Volunteers loved it and we were able to raise money to hire a Design Thinking Consultant (RPCV-Liberia) to plan the curriculum and oversee the process. He is currently training a former Volunteer to become the Design Thinking trainer in Morocco.
- The US Peace Corps has been an exceptional partner from the very beginning. They provide advice and support as well as resources and on-the-ground collaboration. We had a Peace Corps Response Volunteer in Morocco for Group 2, to provide support to the Volunteers in the field. When she ended her service, we hired two former CorpsAfrica Volunteers as “Volunteer Support Specialists."

With 24 Volunteers having successfully completed service in Morocco, and large investment from a state-owned Moroccan company to expand to Senegal and Malawi, CorpsAfrica is drawing significant attention. We have a strong followership base of over 7,000 individuals seeking to participate in the organization in various capacities – as applicants to the Volunteer program, friends of the organization, and partners. In addition, in Morocco, Senegal and Malawi, we receive regular requests from local populations and government authorities asking for CorpsAfrica Volunteers to be placed in communities throughout the country. The demand for the CorpsAfrica model is clearly established. We are still perfecting the model and figuring out best practices before we will be ready to scale up across Africa.